Menlo Park: Designs revealed for new buildings proposed near train station

This will be prime living for those traveling on Caltrain to the city - excited to see how it turns out

The aesthetics on these buildings are terrible. Back to the drawing board.

These should be opportunities for the architects to emulate the uniqueness of Menlo Park in their design. And if you can't figure out what's worth emulating, then make it up! But don't just vomit out the same mundane office infill that infects the South Bay. We need better, and the developers who own these sites will get better products and rents if we kick the design a bit more.

My immediate impression of the design agrees with the comments above - Terrible. The project team needs to get on it. Big problem: Massive wall face on the left. Because of the two building addresses there needs to be intelligent articulation and coordination between the sites.

What's the point of the "heritage tree" nomenclature, if it is completely ignored by Menlo Park developers? And please list the type of trees proposed to be cut down. Did Menlo Park lose its acclaim as a "Tree City USA", or do we use it only when it suits the need? Sheesh!

Where is the required parking for the office workers and residences?

@really
what uniqueness of MP are you referring? Downtown MP has zero historic buildings. Most are one story 1950/60 retail boxes. these buildings are huge steo up from the building they will replace.

@MPer
I'm not sure there is any 'uniqueness' that I could point to, but the designers need to somehow create it, rather than just procreate bland out-of-scale office dross that serves only the developer.

You can scoff at the local aesthetic, but most of us are paying a premium to live here because we like the current look & feel of the community. When the city conducted a survey a few years ago, "village character" was the #1 attribute that residents cited.

Of course, developers and others who stand to profit by ripping out buildings and putting in ugly monstrosities have no respect for those of us who actually live here, and like to mock our choices.

I know: Menlo Park is too big to be a village. Well, Paris has village character all over the place, and it's bigger than Menlo Park! Can we strive to be a little more like charming, walkable, human-scaled Paris and less like just another hideous, overdeveloped little city? Some of you might be happier in Houston.

I have no horse in this race–-seriously! but I'd say we're architecturally a lot more similar to Houston than Paris right now. In Paris, they build up. Have for centuries. At some point those buildings were probably decried as ugly but now we find them quaint. In Houston, where they can just expand, there's less need to optimize land usage by building multi-story buildings. Neither place is a village. Nor is Menlo Park, and I imagine that if you asked five different residents what "village character" meant to them, they'd give you five different answers. It's silly to treat that phrase as though it were somehow an architectural blueprint.

Very few buildings in Paris are taller than 5 or 6 stories, and tall buildings are only permitted in limited parts of the city.

Menlo Park is not Paris, but what village character means to most -- perhaps not to everyone -- is a vibrant, walkable area, sidewalk cafes, family-friendly, lots of retail, people prioritized over vehicles.

But if our city is uncertain about how to translate "village character" into design, maybe they need to ask more questions instead of throwing out the preference expressed by most residents. I imagine that if you asked five different residents what "village character" meant to them, their answers would be pretty close, just based on what I read in the city's survey. It's not at all silly to respect what the residents want. It's our city. The carpetbaggers can make their windfall profits elsewhere.

"A vibrant, walkable area, sidewalk cafes, family-friendly, lots of retail, people prioritized over vehicles" sounds great to me. Let's make it happen!

Where our opinions diverge is here: "most of us are paying a premium to live here because we like the current look & feel of the community."

De gustibus non est disputandum--but I don't particularly find "the current look and feel of the community" to be our strongest selling point. As a pedestrian/cyclist/driver, I find navigating our downtown to be stressful. As a shopper and diner, I wish I had more/better options. As the owner of a non-mansion, there's only so much furniture I need to buy. And there's no question that we need more housing, ideally close to transit and town.

Why do I pay a premium to live here? We have great schools, interesting residents, beautiful trees, a fairly progressive government, nice weather, proximity to a great city and beautiful outdoor areas, etc. We need more housing and I'm excited to see people starting to build it in the downtown area. I'll let the aesthetes hash out the details. :-)